Very few games have made an impact like the Five Nights at Freddy’s series. Whether it’s the creepy atmosphere, the obvious Chuck E. Cheese parallels, the intense difficulty or the rich hidden story throughout all of the series’ installments, there is always something keeping so many people coming back. Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 is no exception.

30 years after the events of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. The player is a newly hired employee at Fazbear’s Fright, a horror-themed attraction designed to capitalize on the tragic events of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. During the week before the attraction is scheduled to open to the public, the player must watch over the facility from the security office during the night shift, but as luck would have it the attraction has added a new, authentic animatronic. Found from within the depths of the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, this new mysterious animatronic will try to make sure that you do not survive five nights at Freddy’s.

This third installment takes everything that fans enjoy about the series and enhances it. Although rather than go bigger with the amount of gameplay mechanics and difficulty, developer Scott Cawthon has instead opted to make a more streamlined and linear approach. Instead of having to avoid the relentless 12 animatronics like in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, the player is put up against a single animatronic with a few surprises along the way. This provides a more subtle, eerie tone to the game, making it all the more terrifying when the new animatronic (named Springtrap.) attacks you.

The story is progressed ingeniously through Atari-like mini games filling in some details that have been missing within the over-arching back story of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and the origins of all of the animatronic characters. The ending especially providing a very somber, upsetting and yet somehow almost uplifting effect to what started as just a simple, scary and partially a darkly humorous Chuck E. Cheese’s parody.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 is not only a very effective horror game, but it is a incredibly well told tale of vengeance, sadness and liberation. Definitely an indie-game classic and hopefully an even better fourth installment is on the horizon. However if that fourth game does not come this is more than enough of a satisfying conclusion to the story of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.